David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief adviser, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that delay could force the GOP hand. “Immigration bill won a huge bipartisan majority in the Senate,” he wrote. “POTUS should agree to shelve exec order for up or down vote in House.” Axelrod did not respond to an email about the tweet.
On Thursday, former DNC chair and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell suggested April or even June as a potential deadline after which Obama could tell Republicans he’ll act if Congress doesn’t send him a bill.
“There are two ways I think he could go about it. One, he could impose a timeline now, say if you send me a bill by April of next year, I won’t issue an executive order, but here’s the executive order I will issue if you don’t send me a bill,” Rendell said on a conference call hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. “Or he can issue the executive order now and say, as soon as you send me a bill I’ll sign it, and then if I can sign I will sign, obviously it will supercede the executive order.”
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